Topic: LDAP and Identity Management Presenter: Jeremy Agee When: 7PM, Thursday May 12, 2011 Where: Red Hat Worldwide Headquarters Permalink: http://trilug.org/2011-05-12/ldap

Jeremy Agee works in Red Hat's Identity Management group, where he helps enterprise customers set up systems to manage users and resources. He knows from personal experience that getting started with user management systems can be tough, but it does not have to be.

Most of us have probably seen pieces of the puzzle. Jeremy will fill in those gaps, introducing us to the basic structure and concepts of managing users. He will walk through an installation of OpenLDAP so we can set up an LDAP server ourselves. Finally, he will touch on some advanced topics, so that we'll know what pieces might be left to build on.

Join us for this in-depth "how-to" talk. It promises to be educational and fun.

NOTE - Elections for the 2011/2012 Steering Committee will be held before the presentation. You must be a TriLUG member (either already, or having filled out a membership form at the April meeting) to vote.

Exciting times are at hand!

As one might guess from the subject of this announcement, the TriLUG Steering Committee is unleashing its first experiment in the realm of data and demographics. We have carefully crafted our inaugural online survey, one which we hope will reveal who our constituents are and how they feel about TriLUG.

Since we believe in open source and value your privacy, and thanks to the excellent LimeSurvey project, our survey is entirely hosted on TriLUG hardware. Your responses are anonymous and will not be shared with third parties. That said, please refrain from abusing your anonymity to the detriment of our efforts.

This is not an excessively long survey. However, you may want to set aside 15-20 minutes just to be safe. If you get interrupted, there is a button to save and resume later at the bottom of each question.

Though it should go without saying, survey participation is entirely voluntary. We don't know who you are, so no one will hold it against you if you roll your eyes and delete this message. But if you are willing to help TriLUG become the best LUG ever, follow the link below to begin...

 Take the TriLUG 2011 Official Survey

This survey will be active for approximately 30 days, so don't miss your chance to be heard. Shortly after it closes, we hope to publish a summary of the responses for all to see.

Any questions or concerns should be sent to the Steering Committee. Thank you in advance for your participation!

Topic: A practical introduction to iSCSI and cost effective NAS solutions Presenter: Jon Magrini When: 7PM, Thursday April 14, 2011 Where: Red Hat Worldwide Headquarters Permalink: http://trilug.org/2011-04-14/storage

Bio: Jon Magrini is a Red Hat TSE in the Storage SBR at Red Hat and joined their team a little over a year ago. His specialty is clustering, with a focus on storage related technologies. Jon's Linux experience started in the early 2000 era when he worked for Borland software and developed pluggable modules, using a pure java open-api for software products such as JBuilder and Together Control Center. His interest for storage started with employment at Red Hat and the purchase of his own EMC CLARiiON, which started a waterfall effect.

More about NAS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage More about iSCSI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISCSI

Synposis: True high availability load balancing traditionally involves specialized, expensive hardware and software. However, you can build advanced, high availability configurations without a single point of failure using nothing but open source tools and commodity hardware. This talk will include a discussion of several tools, configurations, and advantages and disadvantages thereof. All tools involved are 100% free and open source. As a bonus topic, Simon will tell you how to use open source load balancing tools to IPv6-enable your IPv4-only infrastructure with minimal risk, time and hassle.

About the Speaker: Simon Karpen is the system architect / wearer of many hats for VoiceThread, which provides a very powerful rich media asynchronous collaboration platform. He has also worked for the Shodor Education Foundation in the past, and is a current NCSU MBA student (class of May, 2011). Simon is a member of the NC*SA Steering Committee.

When: 7PM, Thursday March 10, 2011 Where: Red Hat Worldwide Headquarters Permalink: http://trilug.org/2011-03-10/LoadBalancing

UPDATE: Slides for this presentation can be accessed at: http://www.trilug.org/media/trilug-HA_Load_Balancing-mtg-2011-03-10.pdf (PDF) http://www.trilug.org/media/trilug-HA_Load_Balancing-mtg-2011-03-10.pptx (Powerpoint)

When we deploy Linux servers on the Internet, they are exposed to the entire world, and they may be vulnerable to attacks. How can we know that they are secure?

As part of the security team at SAS, Ryan Linn tests systems against vulnerabilities, and he recommends ways to mitigate the risks. The tools that he uses are open source, and very sophisticated.

Ryan will introduce us to Backtrack4, the LiveCD with hacking in mind. He will show us how to use the tools to scan a network for vulnerable machines, test a target machine against a list of known vulnerabilities, and how to take control over a machine. PWN3D.

The world-wide Internet - you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Backtrack4 is a must-have tool for anyone planning to put a computer into that environment.

UPDATE: An audio recording of this presentation can be accessed at: http://www.trilug.org/media/trilug-backtrack-and-metasploit-mtg-2011-02-10.wav

It's that time of year again. We have regenerated our SSL certificates for our web and mail servers. Most people will notice this when their email client tries to connect to "mail.trilug.org" (which is the server name that you should use). It will warn that the certificate has changed. The new mail certificate fingerprints are:

SHA1 = 92:8A:60:97:6C:A9:37:C7:67:E4:A7:65:92:2E:06:65:64:CD:A0:5F MD5 = DF:00:29:BB:0D:99:6F:BA:58:06:0A:86:9E:DD:9D:CB

Accept no imitations.

Ten years ago, TriLUG started operating as a North Carolina non-profit corporation, in order to accept hardware and monetary donations, in turn re-donating to schools and local LUGs, acting as an incubator for promoting Linux. Over time, Linux has become more mainstream, is accepted in the business world, and even used at schools. TriLUG's mission has therefore changed accordingly, to become more of an educational and social group for technology and Open Source. Although we're still devoted to education and outreach, our income and expenses are now related to pizza and meetings.

We are run by a Steering Committee whose membership changes by vote every year in May. This committee is a group of volunteers, which mean the committee members have a significantly limited amount of time and energy to invest in running TriLUG. These two facts have led to a problem that TriLUG now faces: Over time, the Steering Committee has focused it's efforts on finding meeting speakers, donors, sponsors, and pizza; and maintaining our online resources. The annual Steering Committee hand-offs and corporate bureaucratic tasks have taken a back seat, to the point that we have been delinquent in corporate paperwork and tax filings. In fact, we are just a hair's breadth from losing our NC non-profit status and our Federal EIN.

TriLUG is now faced with a decision, upon which we must vote. We must choose between one of two options.

Do we want to keep the non-profit corporate status which we've not really used nor needed as of late? If we choose this option, it means that we MUST spend the time and energy (and possibly even money) required to dig ourselves out of a deep paperwork hole in order to prove to the IRS and the State of North Carolina that we desire and deserve to keep the status. In order for this option to function, we must have volunteers (other than the current Steering Committee) who will stand up to do the necessary backlog work. In addition, future Steering Committees MUST be responsible for the bureaucratic tasks necessary for maintaining the non-profit corporate status.

On the other hand, do we opt to dissolve TriLUG as a corporation, and become an informal user group, handling money for pizza and speakers by using a DBA bank account? This choice allows our current and future Steering Committees to focus on providing speakers and pizza for meetings, and maintaining our online resources, and frees us from worrying about meeting (or failing to meet) corporate status requirements and performing the bureaucratic tasks necessary to maintain a non-profit corporation.

As you consider the two choices, keep in mind that TriLUG has no current need for non-profit corporate status, and that if we dissolve the corporation now, at any time in the future we decide we need it, we can do what is necessary then to re-incorporate. Also, consider that that at the organizational meeting held in December to to discuss these matters, the opinion of the majority of those attending was that we no longer need to be a non-profit corporation. Finally, if we choose to keep our current corporate status, it is imperative that those who choose this MUST stand up and invest themselves in making it happen, or the choice WILL fail!

Members of TriLUG, for which option will you vote?

If you would like to listen to the recording of the Organizational Meeting that was held on December 2nd, 2010, wherein our current status and viable options for action were discussed (keep in mind it was a long meeting, at 2 hours and 50 minutes), you can access the recording at:

http://www.trilug.org/media/trilug-organizational-mtg-2010-12-01.wav

In the Linux kernel, the "device mapper" serves as a generic framework to map one block device onto another. It forms the foundation of software RAID, Logical Volume Manager, and LUKS disk encryption. In this instructional presentation, the LUG's own Alan Porter will show how to use these three device mapper facilities.

RAID can be used to provide high availability disks to a service that can not tolerate downtime. Logical Volume Manager can be used to allocate storage space as needed, without regard for where the data is physically stored. And finally, LUKS allows you to encrypt the data that is stored on a physical disk.

Alan Porter is a long-time member of TriLUG, and he is currently serving on the steering committee. In other words, when he's not talking about Linux, he tries to recruit others to talk about Linux!

UPDATE: An audio recording of this presentation can be accessed at: http://www.trilug.org/media/trilug-device-mapper-mtg-2011-01-13.wav